The daily alarm that Katie Lipp installs is not meant to wake her up. Reminds him to go to bed.
The employment lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia, said he tried a number of techniques to set boundaries while working long days from home, leading the law firm during the pandemic. Few measures work, as well as the 9:45 p.m. alarm he began setting last month, though he admits he occasionally postponed it to trigger one last email.
“You never feel like what you’re doing is good enough, so you’re stuck in a trap of overwork,” said Ms. Lipp, the mother of a 5-year-old. “Sleep is the difference. If I have about eight to nine hours, I can start the world. If I get six hours of sleep, it’s like the dead.
One year into the Covid-19 era, many can connect. Employees say that the boundaries between professional and professional life have faded, then disappeared, because the waking life has come to mean “always active” at work. Experts warn that working 24 hours a day – while slipping on tables, helping with homework and taking a few moments with a partner – is unsustainable, and employers at banking giant Citigroup Inc. at software company Pegasystems Inc., is trying ways to ask staff to call back.
In consultation with the giant Accenture PLC, Jimmy Etheredge, the North American company’s executive director, embraces the notion of “taking lunch back”, eating quietly away from the screens and recharging in the middle of each working day. The company encourages employees not to schedule internal meetings that are not related to customer business on Friday, and Mr. Etheredge has repeatedly told employees to be honest with managers, saying, “It’s okay not to be OK.”